The Night Watchman(68)

As soon as she was in her room, she plugged in her comforting Salisbury, the electric heater she’d bought with some of her scholarship money. It was her favorite winter possession, just as her electric fan was her favorite summer possession. She was sensitive to fluctuating temperatures and on a cold day like this, Millie looked down lovingly at the golden metal facing that surrounded the coil. Without taking off her coat and mittens, she put the kettle on for tea. She had a two-burner stove, gas, but she was always careful to make certain the burners were entirely off before she went to bed. Plus she always opened the window a tiny crack, even in the deepest cold. On the worst nights she had been known to get in bed wearing her coat over her sweater and long johns, and once, at minus 40, even a pair of winter galoshes. Tonight, the electric heater took the edge off the cold air immediately. She got the shepherd’s pie off the windowsill and put it before the heater. She poured hot water into the teapot, over the crinkled leaves, and when her tea was ready she poured herself a cup and stirred in half a spoon of sugar. She sat on her one chair, an old wooden kitchen chair. She rested her stocking feet on a stub-legged stool, close to the heater. The shepherd’s pie gently thawed on a saucer, next to her feet. When it was ready, she’d use her gas burner, her frying pan, a bit of butter to brown the crust. Outside, the wind kicked up. Snow scoured the window, but couldn’t get her. For Millie Ann Cloud, things didn’t get much better. Sitting in her warm room while snow filled the atmosphere, toasting her feet in front of the glowing Salisbury. Dinner thawing. And two letters to open.

The first one was completely normal. It was from her mother, who now lived in Brainerd. She always wrote copiously, mainly about the antics of the dog, the cat, and her gadabout friends, comforting tidings but never of much interest. The second letter was from Thomas Wazhashk, and this letter interested Millie very much. In fact, it was a truly startling letter. First, that she was remembered, or known to anyone in the tribe except her family. Second, that her findings might be considered useful. Third, this business of termination. Whatever it was, she didn’t think it would affect her personally. But to be considered useful by her father’s people warmed her even more than the Salisbury.





What She Needed




Vera had been sick for as long as she could remember—it wasn’t just the movement, the swaying, the stinking little aperture into which she was locked and where the men entered and used her body, day and night (though she could not distinguish day from night). The cook’s assistant, who was supposed to take care of her, was using what she needed on himself, and because of that Vera’s agony was continual. Her insides were being pulled out. Her brain was heaving in her skull. The cook’s assistant tried to taper her off, giving her diminished doses. Then what they both needed was gone. Vera itched, shrieked, moaned like a demon, threw herself against the walls. It got worse. She foamed and shat and made herself so horrifying that, one night, they dressed her in a dead man’s clothes and carried her out of the ship and up a dock. The man who’d used up what she needed knew how it was not to have what they needed. He advised the other men not to throw her in the lake, which was cold, anaerobic in its depths, and would preserve the body they had used. So two of them dropped her, unconscious in her own filthy blanket, at the end of a steep alley in Duluth.





Old Man Winter




Sometimes he thought that his spirit would fly from tree to tree like a curious bird. He imagined that he would watch the living, call and sing to them. But if he went too far with that idea, it made him lonely. The living wouldn’t know him anymore. No, he would walk on his four-day journey to the town of the dead. There, a feast was going, always going, every dish he liked spread across a wide table of yellow stone. Everything in that town would be golden in color, except perhaps the food, which would have its usual tasty colors—blue and purple berries, roasted brown meats, red jellies and breads and bannocks. He would eat and eat. The food would be shared with all the people he had lost, the people he missed. When he saw his beloved niinimoshenh, what would she do? Whistle to him? They used to use the chickadee’s spring song. Yes, he would head to her straight off. He wouldn’t hang around the living. Let them do what they must.

It was hard to leave just yet.

The beauty of the leaves was gone again, another quarter off the great wheel of the year. The elegant branches were stark against the sky. He loved it when the true shapes of the trees were revealed. He slept and slept. He could sleep for an entire day and night. It seemed to him strange that with so little time left he would choose to so deliciously spend it unaware. He still craved to drink in the greatness of the world. When on warmer days he bundled up and sat outside in his little chair, he felt the roots of the trees humming below the earth. The trees were having a last bedtime drink of the great waters that flowed along down there. Like him, before they went to sleep. Beneath that layer of water he sensed beings. They moved so slowly that humans were usually not aware of their existence. But he did feel their movements down in those regions. And yet deeper, far deeper, below those beings, there was the fire of creation, which had been buried at the center of the earth by stars.

Biboon added more wood to the stove. He moved his cot a little closer to the warmth. Then he lay back and closed his eyes. He was warm under the blanket, even his feet. He watched a circle of silvery women dancing in an icy field. One of them turned to him, gestured with her little fan of spotted woodpecker feathers. It was Julia.